Josh Gad Rumored to Play The Thing/Ben Grimm in THE FANTASTIC FOUR

At this point, Fantastic Four fans should be ready for the upcoming film reboot, The Fantastic Four, to be a radical reinvention of the famous Marvel family. It’s likely that they will be casting young on this one with names likeMiles Teller, Kit Harington, and Richard Madden being rumored for Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara and Saoirse Ronan rumored for Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, and Michael B. Jordan all but officially confirmed to play Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. The only piece of casting news that hasn’t come up yet is who will play Ben Grimm/The Thing. Today, we have the first casting rumor for the big, orange rock monster: Josh Gad.

Hit the jump for more. Filming on The Fantastic Four is set to begin filming on March 31st for a June 19, 2015 release date.

According to Movies.com, “word on Gad comes from within casting circles close to the film”, and I’m willing to trust their word on this because Movies.com isn’t known for trying to run a rumor mill. Additionally, Gad, like Ben Grimm, would be the oldest member of the group, although in this case, “old” is 32. And before you go flying off the handle about his voice, screenwriter Jeremy Slatertweeted the following about the character:

No idea if it’s true or not, but I kinda like the Josh Gad casting rumor!

My argument has always been that Ben is the closest thing Marvel has to a Pixar character. You need an expressive, lovable voice.

And *any* actor you cast is going to have his voice digitally lowered and modulated to match the character. So why not go for pure talent?

I would like to point out that I’ve known Slater for a while now, and he’s not a constant shill. If he has something positive to say, he genuinely believes it.

As for my personal thoughts on where The Fantastic Four is going, I’m not deeply attached to the franchise, so I find this kind of unexpected casting to be exciting.

However, director Josh Tranktook to Twitter to flatly deny the Gad rumor, which to me would be the end of it except back in August, he also said Teller wasn’t circling the role, but Teller’s name has been mentioned in connection with the project as recently as last week. My point here is that everything is “deny, deny, deny” because Fox is trying to keep a lid on it, and that means not letting rumors stand. I’m not saying that Trank is wrong (obviously, it’s his movie), but with Teller staying in contention after Trank’s previous denial, I’m not willing to write off Gad completely.